drag2share: Xiaomi's 49-inch Android TV boasts 4K for just $640

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/15/xiaomi-mi-tv-2-4k/

The Mi Pad wasn't Xiaomi's only announcement today. Following the Chinese company's first smart TV from last September, today it has unveiled a slightly larger model with a nice surprise: 4K for just CN¥3,999 or about $640! Like its affordable predecessor, this 49-inch TV comes with built-in Android (with MIUI TV skin), though you can easily side-load other TV apps. On the hardware side, you'll find a 4K 3D panel made by either LG or CSOT within a 6.2mm aluminum bezel, and underneath that lies a MediaTek MStar 6A918 chip (1.45GHz quad-core CPU, Mali-450 MP4 GPU) plus 2GB of RAM to drive all those pixels. On top of the built-in 8GB space, you also get to add up to 64GB of storage via microSD.

The MI TV 2 comes with a few nice goodies. Most notably, it has a Bluetooth LE remote instead of the old infrared version, and should you lose it in your room, you can even tap the bottom of the TV to make the remote beep. Alternatively, you can also install the remote app on your phone, with which you can use gestures and voice to control the TV, as well as read up related info -- some of which comes from IMDB -- about the show you're watching.

Another nice feature here is the audio part. CEO Lei Jun said that in order to keep the TV's thickness at 15.5mm, his team decided to store the speakers in separate parts: a wired audio bar with the mid-range and treble drivers, and a Bluetooth subwoofer with the 8-inch driver. Better yet, you can also use this kit with your mobile devices via Bluetooth.

As for availability, Lei admitted that his company didn't do so well with the production rate of the original MI TV, but this time he said this should no longer be a problem, partly because he's teamed up with Wistron and Pegatron. Folks in China will be able to order one on May 27th, but for the rest of us, chances are we'll never see one outside the country any time soon.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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drag2share: 'Two And A Half Men' Ratings Plummeted After Charlie Sheen Was Fired [CHARTS]

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/two-and-a-half-men-ratings-without-charlie-sheen-2014-5

We recently shared some charts from "Graph TV,” a site that indexes the IMDB ratings of TV shows.

It’s pretty useful if you want to see fan’s favorite — and least favorite — episodes of shows quickly or if you want to see when viewership of a popular show started to wane.

After CBS announced "Two and A Half Men" would come to a close after season 12 Wednesday, we decided to take a look at the long running show.

Charlie Sheen was ousted from the show following negative comments about the show’s creator, Chuck Lorre, initially on radio and TMZ followed by a series of network interviews where he exhibited strange behavior and continued to bad mouth Lorre and the network.

As a result, the show awkwardly killed off Sheen’s character at the start of the ninth season. 

The episode may have been a rating’s high for the network (more than 28 million viewers tuned in to watch); however, Sheen’s absence wasn’t received well by long-time viewers.

No w in season 11 an average of million watch weekly.

According to Graph TV, here’s how IMDB ratings and reviews look for episodes with Sheen replaced by Ashton Kutcher.

Now in its 11th season, the show receives between 8-10 million viewers (much less than the average of 15 million when Sheen was around). 

In comparison, here's an overview of the show's ratings by season average. See how the ratings fared with and without Sheen.

SEE ALSO: These charts show when your favorite TV show peaked

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Article: Samsung 28-inch 4K UHD LED 60Hz Monitor $600 shipped (Reg. $700)

Amazon offers the Samsung 28-inch 4K UHD LED 60Hz Monitor (model U28D590D) for $599.99 with free shipping. That's a savings of $100 off the already low list price of $699.99 and a match for the best price we've seen since its release last April.It features two HDMI 1.4 and one DisplayPort, audio ...

http://9to5toys.com/2014/05/15/samsung-28-inch-4k-uhd-led-60hz-monitor-600-shipped-reg-700/

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drag2share: Science Is Finally Making Glass That Birds Won't Fly Into

Source: http://gizmodo.com/science-is-finally-making-glass-that-birds-wont-fly-int-1576519346

Birds flying into window panes might be the stuff of cartoon comic fodder, but the reality is bleak: Hundreds of millions of birds die from flying into transparent glass every year. Thankfully, science is finally putting a stop to it.

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drag2share: THE HONEYBEE POPULATION IS COLLAPSING — Here's The Awful Way That Will Affect The World

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/our-world-looks-like-without-honeybees-2014-5

Nearly one-third of the world's crops are dependent on honeybees for pollination, but over the last decade the insects have been dying at unprecedented rates both in the United States and abroad.

A new study strengths the evidence linking pesticides to a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder, but the decline of managed honeybee populations has also been blamed on a combination of disease, parasites, poor weather, and the stress of being trucked from orchard-to-orchard to pollinate different crops.

We have few planned defenses against a honeybee disaster. The Farm Bill passed last June allocates less than $2 million a year in emergency assistance to honeybees. 

"The bottom line is, if something is not done to improve honeybee health, then most of the interesting food we eat is going to be unavailable," warned Carlen Jupe, secretary and treasurer for the California State Beekeepers Association.

Honeybees as a species are not in danger of extinction, but their ability to support the industry of commercial pollination, and by extension, a large portion of our food supply, is in serious danger.

Here we take a hypothetical look at how the human diet and lifestyle would change if honeybees and other bee pollinators disappeared from our planet one day. A world without honeybees as a stable source of pollination would mean a world without fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. 

This is the worst case scenario. It's possible that human ingenuity and alternate pollinators can mitigate some of these outcomes, but not necessarily all of them.

If their cultivated bees continue to die out, beekeepers who make their living by managing bee colonies will go out of business.

Without commercial beekeepers, farmers will not be able to scrape together enough bees to pollinate their fields.

If the farmer does not provide fields or orchards with enough honeybees for pollination, the whole harvest can fail.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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